LAUDERHILL LAND BOUGHT FOR SCHOOL

After nine years of bitter wrangling, land for a desperately needed school in Lauderhill was bought by the School Board in less than an hour.

A cascade of signatures on closing documents Thursday cleared the last roadblock for so-called "Elementary X" to be built on 12 acres northwest of Oakland Park Boulevard and Inverrary Boulevard.

"Usually it takes three hours to talk about a hundred things, but this took about 40 minutes because we've been talking about it for years," said Chuck Fink, of the school district's property management division.

The 1,000-seat school should ease crowding at Lauderhill Paul Turner, Royal Palm, Tamarac, Village, Castle Hill and Castle Hill Annex elementaries _ some of which are among the most crowded schools in the county.

But when the new school might open is unknown.

District officials are overhauling their five-year construction schedule to include the extra $281 million provided by state legislators last fall.

The revision may not be ready until July and no one has decided whether the Lauderhill school remains among the highest priority projects, said Dagoberto Diaz, director of facilities project management.

The school district first proposed building a new school in Lauderhill in 1989. Like all proposed schools, it was assigned a letter name: Elementary X. Starting in 1990, the school district tried to buy the 12-acre parcel, owned by Baytree of Inverrary Realty Partners.

But Lauderhill city officials and residents of the adjacent Inverrary subdivision opposed it at every opportunity. Opponents said the site would force students to cross busy Oakland Park Boulevard and the new site is adjacent to a lake.

But black activists said Inverrary's residents didn't want a nearby school that would attract primarily minority children. They said city officials were bowing to Inverrary's political clout. City officials and Inverrary residents denied that allegation.

The dispute stalled the project so long that $14 million originally earmarked for Elementary X was used to build Tradewinds Elementary in Coconut Creek.

The city finally lost its last legal challenge in February, clearing the way for construction. But even then, city officials persuaded residents to write dozens of protests to School Board members.

But on Friday, Lauderhill Mayor Richard Kaplan said: "There's not a lot the city of Lauderhill can do at this point except try and work with what we've got. I still have serious concerns about safety issues. I still do and I always will.

"The School Board is entitled to buy the land since they won the lawsuit. They can build on the property."